# What was the most anachronistic thing you've seen in a fictional work that wasn't intentional or an accident? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 8, 2021, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956 "2021-11-08T03:28:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/361 "2022-06-08T17:10:31Z")
never mind ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/362 "2022-06-08T17:18:03Z")
> [@Horatius](#): > > I did that in the remake of Battlestar Galactica. They were related to humans, but had at least some significant differences. Didn’t they come from the planet Kobol? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/363 "2022-06-08T17:31:21Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Didn’t they come from the planet Kobol? Kobol had originally been settled by colonists from Earth. The overarching plot of the series is about the survivors of the Cylon War trying to return to Earth in hopes of re-establishing civilization there. It’s an open question if we’re the ancestors of the characters in the show, or if the characters on the show are our ancestors. ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/364 "2022-06-08T20:10:32Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > That’s an interesting choice, because the movie never really makes the nationality of most of its characters clear, nor do we know what language they were speaking… If Kirby was supposed to be an Englishman speaking English, then I guess his accent was out of place, but if he was supposed to be a German speaking German, then a Brooklyn accent is as good as any other. > > I agree, though, that director Paul Verhoeven, probably just didn’t care. He’s never really had much of an ear for English-language dialog. In The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese used accents deliberately, as a class signifier. The apostles (disciples?) and Jesus himself spoke with a more working-class American tone, while the government elites (David Bowie as Pontius Pilate) spoke with a British accent. Some wags criticized Harvey Keitel’s Judas having a Bronx accent, but it was kind of on purpose. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2022, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/365 "2022-06-08T20:20:56Z")
> [@SciFiSam](#): > > Grantchester is set in the 1950s near Cambridge. Black people would have been uncommon in a small village, but by no means impossible - lots arrived from the late 40 from Commonwealth countries to take jobs in transport, medication and other short-staffed fields (they were invited here and even had their journey paid for). > > People from the Indian subcontinent have also been pretty widespread in the UK since the 50s, and many work in the NHS, which means that some would have ended up living in small villages. Interracial dating in the 50s was highly frowned upon, but being friends and going out for a coffee wouldn’t have been weird in the slightest. This is an old reply to something I asked about “tokenism” in UK TV shows. I was specifically referring to _Midsomer Murders._ Well, my sister read an article recently (it wasn’t a recent article though) about how much flak the Midsomer producers were getting about how “white” the show was. So, they deliberately began sprinkling non-white characters into the show. Even if people of color were living in the villages, the show wasn’t including them before the complaints. Not tokenism, exactly, but interesting they had to be pushed into it. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/366 "2022-06-09T01:07:54Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > It’s possible that lost home world was Earth No, it’s not possible, unless you assume that the opening “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .” is a lie. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/367 "2022-06-09T01:09:03Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > No, it’s not possible, unless you assume that the opening “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .” is a lie. I literally addressed that in the very next sentence of the post you quoted. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/368 "2022-06-09T01:09:17Z")
This kind of discussion is pointless. Star Wars is a mythological setting. Whether or not the human-looking people in the story are literally biologically real humans or not is a silly question. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/369 "2022-06-09T01:09:45Z")
You are welcome to not participate in any discussion you feel is “silly.” ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/370 "2022-06-09T01:10:37Z")
The fact that these kinds of conversations happen in literary discussions brings the average intelligence of literary conversation down, and we are all about fighting intelligence, so I consider it my duty to object when I see them. Fiction is not reality and we should not discuss it as if it were, but rather what it is, which might be metaphor or parable or something else, but not as if it is meant to be literal truth. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/371 "2022-06-09T01:31:43Z")
**Modhat** : stop threadshitting immediately. If you don’t like the conversation, just refrain. I’m reviewing your record to see if this should be a warning. No warning issued. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/372 "2022-06-09T02:06:49Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > > [@SciFiSam](#): > > > > Grantchester is set in the 1950s near Cambridge. Black people would have been uncommon in a small village, but by no means impossible - lots arrived from the late 40 from Commonwealth countries to take jobs in transport, medication and other short-staffed fields (they were invited here and even had their journey paid for). > > > > People from the Indian subcontinent have also been pretty widespread in the UK since the 50s, and many work in the NHS, which means that some would have ended up living in small villages. Interracial dating in the 50s was highly frowned upon, but being friends and going out for a coffee wouldn’t have been weird in the slightest. > > This is an old reply to something I asked about “tokenism” in UK TV shows. I was specifically referring to _Midsomer Murders._ Well, my sister read an article recently (it wasn’t a recent article though) about how much flak the Midsomer producers were getting about how “white” the show was. So, they deliberately began sprinkling non-white characters into the show. Even if people of color were living in the villages, the show wasn’t including them before the complaints. Not tokenism, exactly, but interesting they had to be pushed into it. I remember the controversy. There was one episode afterwards where they showed a bunch of villagers at a ballroom dance. There was a Black couple there, and the camera lingered on them more than usual for background extras. Ron Shelton talked about how in _Cobb,_ the fans in the ballpark were all white. He wanted to add non-white extras, but the stadium would have been segregated at the time. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/373 "2022-06-09T02:43:14Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > we are all about fighting intelligence Fighting intelligence? Yeah, we do that sometimes too… ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/374 "2022-06-09T11:47:30Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > While this little scene in part was designed to (correctly) portray the reality that in that era (11th century) the Muslim world was generally ahead of Western Europe in terms of knowledge / early scientific development, AFAIK nothing like a retractable spyglass of that sort would exist for some 600 years later. While there are some important early works on optics by Muslim scholars contemporary to this era, I don’t think anyone anywhere had gotten lens crafting and optics down to the level of being able to create a spyglass at that point. Of course it’s a quibble, but Azeem’s telescope wasn’t a retractable spyglass, it was an ad hoc device made from two lenses held in a leather housing. Here’s a [youtube cite.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZTgX4UrVdE) ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/375 "2022-06-09T14:49:03Z")
That’s a good catch, while I had seen that movie back in theaters in '91, and a half dozen or so times since, it’d been a long time and in my mind I definitely remembered it being a small retractable spyglass–just shows the faultiness of human memory. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/376 "2022-06-09T14:59:03Z")
No, the telescope stuck in my mind because of the way t was constructed – a heavy leather piece that rolled up into a frustum of a cone, with a lens at each end. It clearly wasn’t adjustable, and if you got the lens positions wrong, it’d be pretty useless. But there’s not a speck of evidence that such a thing existed at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/377 "2022-06-09T23:46:46Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Hmm, I’d bet it goes even farther back, that movies made in the 50s portraying ancient cultures had them in mid-century hairdos… Oh, yes. I remember one of John Wayne’s earlier movies (I don’t remember the name - maybe it was the one where he sang) where the romantic lead had a short and very fifties “permanent wave” hairdo. Watching it made me think of pictures of my great aunts. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2022, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/378 "2022-06-09T23:59:34Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > Oh, yes. I remember one of John Wayne’s earlier movies (I don’t remember the name - maybe it was the one where he sang) where the romantic lead had a short and very fifties “permanent wave” hairdo. Watching it made me think of pictures of my great aunts. Hairdos and costumes in a lot of movies and shows fail historical accuracy. MASH, for example, which feature 1970s-1980s haircuts for an early 1950s setting. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/379 "2022-06-10T00:13:26Z")
Another thing Western movies get wrong is the hats worn then. They more often wore derbies than cowboy hats. They also wore various other hats more than cowboy hats. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2022, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956/380 "2022-06-10T00:17:24Z")
Well pretty much everything about our notions of the “Wild West” and cowboy culture is absolute fiction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-the-most-anachronistic-thing-youve-seen-in-a-fictional-work-that-wasnt-intentional-or-an-accident/953956.md?page=20)